100+ Inspiring Empathy Quotes to Open Your Heart and Mind

"The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy."

- Meryl Streep

"Empathy is choosing to see ourselves in another despite our differences. It's recognizing that the same humanity - the same desire for meaning, fulfillment and security - exists in each of us, even if it's expressed uniquely."

- Vivek Murthy

"Empathy is about standing in someone else's shoes, feeling with his or her heart, seeing with his or her eyes. Not only is empathy hard to outsource and automate, but it makes the world a better place."

- Daniel H. Pink

"When you show deep empathy toward others, their defensive energy goes down, and positive energy replaces it. That's when you can get more creative in solving problems."

- Stephen Covey

"Empathy is the starting point for creating a community and taking action. It's the impetus for creating change."

- Max Carver

"Empathy is simply listening, holding space, withholding judgement, emotionally connecting, and communicating that incredibly healing message of 'You're not alone.'"

- Brené Brown

"Reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else's shoes for a while."

- Malorie Blackman

"Empathy is the most mysterious transaction that the human soul can have, and it's accessible to all of us, but we have to give ourselves the opportunity to identify, to plunge ourselves in a story where we see the world from the bottom up or through another's eyes or heart."

- Sue Monk Kidd

"Empathy begins with understanding life from another person's perspective. Nobody has an objective experience of reality. It's all through our own individual prisms."

- Sterling K. Brown

"I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it."

- Maya Angelou

"Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another."

- Alfred Adler

"Virtual reality is the 'ultimate empathy machine.' These experiences are more than documentaries. They're opportunities to walk a mile in someone else's shoes."

- Chris Milk

"When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you."

- Susan Sarandon

"Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself."

- Mohsin Hamid

"If your emotional abilities aren't in hand, if you don't have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can't have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far."

- Daniel Goleman

"Humans aren't as good as we should be in our capacity to empathize with feelings and thoughts of others, be they humans or other animals on Earth. So maybe part of our formal education should be training in empathy. Imagine how different the world would be if, in fact, that were 'reading, writing, arithmetic, empathy.'"

- Neil deGrasse Tyson

"I believe that stories are incredibly important, possibly in ways we don't understand, in allowing us to make sense of our lives, in allowing us to escape our lives, in giving us empathy and in creating the world that we live in."

- Neil Gaiman

"We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old - and that's the criterion by which I'll be selecting my judges."

- Barack Obama

"If you aren't humble, whatever empathy you claim is false and probably results from some arrogance or the desire to control. But true empathy is rooted in humility and the understanding that there are many people with as much to contribute in life as you."

- Anand Mahindra

"The opposite of anger is not calmness, its empathy."

- Mehmet Oz

"Learning is a result of listening, which in turn leads to even better listening and attentiveness to the other person. In other words, to learn from the child, we must have empathy, and empathy grows as we learn."

- Alice Miller

"Empathy is a necessary step for truth and reconciliation."

- Simon Baron-Cohen

"What separates humans from other animals is our empathy. With the possible exception of bonobos, we are the most empathetic animal on the planet."

- Andy Dunn

"The heart is like a garden. It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?"

- Jack Kornfield

"Look at other people and ask yourself if you are really seeing them or just your thoughts about them."

- Jon Kabat-Zinn

"Human nature is complex. Even if we do have inclinations toward violence, we also have inclination to empathy, to cooperation, to self-control."

- Steven Pinker

"Human morality is unthinkable without empathy."

- Frans de Waal

"Change begins with understanding and understanding begins by identifying oneself with another person: in a word, empathy. The arts enable us to put ourselves in the minds, eyes, ears and hearts of other human beings."

- Richard Eyre

"The main tenet of design thinking is empathy for the people you're trying to design for. Leadership is exactly the same thing - building empathy for the people that you're entrusted to help."

- David M. Kelley

"My own feeling is we need more compassion, we need more empathy, we need more togetherness, in terms of working together."

- Cindy McCain

"I do not shy away from accepting that I had a troubled past, but in the journey of coming out of that dark phase, I understand humans better. I am less judgmental and more compassionate. I learned empathy and forgiveness, and that gives me confidence as a person."

- Amit Sadh

"When you sing with a group of people, you learn how to subsume yourself into a group consciousness because a capella singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community. That's one of the great feelings - to stop being me for a little while and to become us. That way lies empathy, the great social virtue."

- Brian Eno

"What we need in medical schools is not to teach empathy, as much as to preserve it - the process of learning huge volumes of information about disease, of learning a specialized language, can ironically make one lose sight of the patient one came to serve; empathy can be replaced by cynicism."

- Abraham Verghese

"Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It's the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else's pain is as meaningful as your own."

- Barbara Kingsolver

"We have to teach empathy as we do literacy."

- Bill Drayton

"Women are, in my view, natural peacemakers. As givers and nurturers of life, through their focus on human relationships and their engagement with the demanding work of raising children and protecting family life, they develop a deep sense of empathy that cuts through to underlying human realities."

- Daisaku Ikeda

"An exchange of empathy provides an entry point for a lot of people to see what healing feels like."

- Tarana Burke

"You don't teach morals and ethics and empathy and kindness in the schools. You teach that at home, and children learn by example."

- Judy Sheindlin

"I don't mean to criticize anyone in any way that I wouldn't criticize myself. I think people should have fun, and have a good time, and enjoy the luck that we have to be lazy and dwell in consumerism. But I think that it's a balance. And our job as actors is empathy."

- Natalie Portman

"Resilience is, of course, necessary for a warrior. But a lack of empathy isn't."

- Phil Klay

"Having emotional intelligence allows you to manage your emotions, show empathy, and prevent you from getting distracted. It also helps you solve problems and be a more likable person."

- John Rampton

"True contentment comes with empathy."

- Tim Finn

"We admire elephants in part because they demonstrate what we consider the finest human traits: empathy, self-awareness, and social intelligence. But the way we treat them puts on display the very worst of human behavior."

- Graydon Carter

"Because a human being is endowed with empathy, he violates the natural order if he does not reach out to those who need care. Responding to this empathy, one is in harmony with the order of things, with dharma; otherwise, one is not."

- Dayananda Saraswati

"People complain not because something sucks. People complain because they're looking for empathy and to feel connected with those around them. Unfortunately, complaining is maybe the least useful way to connect with other human beings."

- Mark Manson

"I don't know whether your heart ever necessarily changes, but time changes the way that you perceive the world. And you just hope it gives you more empathy and all those other things."

- Mark Knopfler

"Artificial intelligence is growing up fast, as are robots whose facial expressions can elicit empathy and make your mirror neurons quiver."

- Diane Ackerman

"I've been fascinated by the idea that evil is the absence of empathy."

- John Connolly

"Desperation, weakness, vulnerability - these things will always be exploited. You need to protect the weak, ring-fence them, with something far stronger than empathy."

- Zadie Smith

"Universal basic income is not a solution in search of a problem - it is the obvious solution that has been in front of us for years. It only requires us to have the vision, empathy and courage to adopt it for the American people before it is too late."

- Andrew Yang

"Empathy, humanity and support for each other is more important than revenue, than growth."

- Eric Yuan

"Negotiation is empathy. It's almost trite to say that if you can't put yourself in the seat of the other person you're speaking with, you're not going to do well. It's not about being a bully, not about making offers people can't refuse."

- Marc Randolph

"It's dangerous to think of yourself as a hero and someone else as a villain. It gets in the way of empathy."

- Megan Ganz

"All advocacy is, at its core, an exercise in empathy."

- Samantha Power

"Great teaching requires incredible talent and dedication, strong intellectual ability and interpersonal skill, real discipline and empathy."

- Bruce Rauner

"As far as my mindset changing, I see myself having more empathy in my older age."

- Bill Burr

"You can't write about the past and ignore religion. It was such a fundamental, mind-shaping, driving force for pre-modern societies. I'm very interested in what religion does to us - its capacity to create love and empathy or hatred and violence."

- Geraldine Brooks

"This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money and power and no empathy."

- Alice Walker

"I think any time anybody sees the bad guy show emotion and you're not hitting the audience over the head, there's always a tinge of empathy for that individual."

- Paul Wesley

"Empathy is not a betrayal of one's cause."

- Megan Phelps-Roper

"A child raised on a desert island, alone, without social interaction, without language, and thus lacking empathy, is still a sentient being."

- Daniel Dennett

"The second you think that all your good fortune is a product of your virtue, you become highly judgmental, lacking empathy, totally without self-awareness, arrogant, stupid - I mean, all the stuff that our ruling class is."

- Tucker Carlson

"I think empathy is romantic. I think humor is romantic. Kindness is romantic. I think those kind of gestures of caring and love are romantic."

- Michael Buble

"No matter what you do, you're going to run into haters online. We're not talking about ordinary, disgruntled customers who should be addressed with empathy and understanding. Haters are a breed apart."

- Andrew Shaffer